PPP Loan Application Round 1


So I'm a small business owner and, like many businesses, have been affected by Covid-19 and the stay-at-home orders that prevent us from operating our businesses normally. Like many, many other small businesses, I waited patiently for April 3 to start applying for the CARES provision for a forgivable PPP loan to help cover payroll for a couple of months. However, our big, national bank was unable to process loan applications on day one. I had already called the few branches where I conduct business to try to get on a "list" to see if I could get information fed to me, instead of having to clamor for it. Despite these efforts, little information was coming out.

Our bank was able to call me back, but only to say they'd reach out when they knew something. Here we are nearly three weeks later, the money is gone from round one of PPP and round two is being debated in the house. I am hopeful that we are able to leverage round two, as we stopped waiting for our big bank after a few days and tried one of the online lender options. We got all the way to underwriting, but funds were gone. I hope we don't have to apply from scratch, again.

I saw today that Shake Shack, who was awarded $10 million under PPP (the maximum loan), is returning all of the funds to the program. I'm glad to see this, but they never should have been given those funds in the first place. The program was too inclusive of large employers and didn't really help main street businesses. Shake Shack has revenues in the hundreds of millions and is likely to stay liquid for some time and very likely has access to monies. Smaller businesses are hoping for loans in the tens of thousands just to stay afloat. I hope the updated provisions for PPP's round two include limiting loans to small businesses that actually need the assistance.

By the way, by the time funds had dried up, our big, national bank was still not accepting applications for the PPP program. No surprise. According to Ben Popken and Stephanie Ruhle of NBCNews, when asked about PPP loan applications, "The CEO of an independent bank said it was like 'a stampede through the eye of a needle.'"